“Not a penny.” Obviously seeing the still-confused look on Brandon’s face, she shook her head and laid it out with bald, horrific bluntness. “Don’t you get it? None of the other auctions were payable in dollars or euro or yen or anything tangible. They were strictly Faida.” She shook her head in utter disgust.

Brandon lowered himself into his chair, at last getting it. But Lily made it eminently clear anyway.

“He slaughtered those women for credits in this hellhole of a game. He did it for play money.”

14

Transferring funds. Real funds. It made him very nervous.

But the Reaper had no choice. He needed the money by Saturday. Though he still hoped to get Warren Lee before the deadline, he had to be prepared for every possibility.

Which meant cash.

Maybe because he’d often wondered whether this day would come, whether he might someday need more money to survive in this, his unhappy life, he had already opened an online account using a stolen name and social. Amazing how easy it was to set up those offshore accounts without ever walking into a bank or having to produce ID. And so easy to find out how to do it on the information highway.

Once he proved he had the kid, his buyer would make a substantial deposit into the foreign account. A few clicks of the keys later, and he’d have it in his real one, ready to be used to pay off one filthy blackmailer.

It could be tracked. Eventually. But only if someone was looking for it.

Nobody was. Nobody knew about him. Because if the feds had infiltrated the Playground, the site would be long gone by now. The administrators were good, better than any dumb-ass FBI agents. They had security layers deeper than anything he’d ever seen, and Satan’s Playground would have been nothing but a fond memory if there had been the slightest breach.

No, it wasn’t because the Playground had been discovered that the FBI had come around looking for Lisa’s body.

It was because of Warren Lee.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out before. The blackmailer hadn’t gotten curious about the cops searching the woods near his place. It had been the other way around. Lee must have called in an anonymous tip specifically to jack up the heat for his blackmail plan.

The realization had both comforted and infuriated him. He’d been happy to realize he wouldn’t have to give up his playtime. And furious at the manipulation.

“I’m gonna get you, old man,” he said, his hands tightening on the steering wheel of his truck.

Yes, discovery might come eventually. He’d deal with it at that time. If his secret activities ever did come to light, and he thought the police really knew anything about Satan’s Playground and his alter ego, it wouldn’t matter that they could trace it. Because he would never be taken, never tried.

No one would ever lay physical hands on him again.

But that was a long way off, hopefully to be worried about only in the distant future. Now he just had to get through these next few days, as difficult as they were going to be. He had to allow himself to be manipulated one last time.

“And then never again,” he told himself as he trolled the playground. A mundane, boring real one. It was small, with just a few creaky swings and a jungle gym, in a small town between home and Leesburg.

He’d swung past it twice in the past hour. Only twice. He couldn’t afford to be remembered once a kid went missing. This was riskier than anything he’d ever done. He was much too close to home for his liking. But he had no time and no choice.

Funny how fate favored him. Because while he usually never had any peace unless he locked himself away and disappeared into his Playground, the house would be empty for at least the next few days. Meaning he could do what he had to do in private, with no chance of being caught. He’d snatch a boy, drug him, take him home, and spirit him down into the basement. Into his private rooms.

No one around to see. No one around to hear. No one around to stop him.

It was perfect. As if some entity were offering silent approval and support for what he did and wanted him to continue.

He just had to find the kid.

So far he’d seen no prospects. People weren’t very trusting with their children these days. Mothers sat on benches overlooking the park, feeding slobbery babies and calling out, “Be careful,” to their brats. Part of him wanted to move on to the next viable location for finding a vulnerable victim, an arcade or a public swimming pool or a park.

Another part wanted to drive right the fuck over to Warren Lee’s house and put a bullet in the back of his head.

It was a flip of a coin. Whichever came first. Kill a kid. Kill a blackmailer.

No-brainer, really. But he couldn’t risk failing. He had to cover both bases.

He’d swallowed his distaste for the whole thing, knowing it had to be done. That didn’t mean he was going to enjoy it. Or even that he planned to do everything the buyer wanted. He wasn’t raping a little boy. Only a sick weirdo would do something like that.

He’d make it look good for the camera, but he’d show mercy. He’d do something to the kid so he wouldn’t feel too much pain. And he’d kill him quickly.

After all, he wasn’t a monster.

Dean liked Stacey’s father. The older man was only in his early sixties, with a youthful face and attitude. But the swelling of his joints and his slow movements told the entire story of his early retirement.

He’d been a lawman for many years, though-a deputy for his own father, then sheriff-and still thought like one. So not only did he immediately offer to watch every inch of footage from the mall surveillance cameras; he also proved able to help in another way.

Like any really good cop, the man had kept journals throughout his years in office. He still had them. “I can’t promise anything,” he told both Dean and Stacey as they set up her laptop on his kitchen table. “But I’ll dig them out and glance through them, see if I noted any cases of animal abuse. Just because I can’t remember it off the top of my head doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” He shook his head sadly and told Dean, “I recently lost my dog, you know. I can’t imagine somebody hurting a defenseless animal on purpose.”

Dean kept his mouth shut, understanding Stacey’s reason for keeping the truth to herself. For her sake, and for Mr. Rhodes’s, he hoped she never had to tell him.

Something else they didn’t tell him: that a child’s life was in danger. Neither of them wanted to add to the pressure. Though Mr. Rhodes was smart and capable, his daughter appeared to want to shield him, as if she’d assumed the role of protective parent because of his physical ailments.

The man’s slight smile, and the occasional roll of his eyes, said he knew it. And that he put up with it.

Stacey might think she was fooling everyone with her hard shell and swagger. But there was a nurturing, loving woman inside her. He’d felt it. He’d seen it.

He also knew why she tried to hide it.

It wasn’t just her job, a woman as sheriff. Stacey’s attitude was another means of self-protection, of getting over the emotional meltdown he suspected she’d experienced after Virginia Tech. She hadn’t talked about it; she hadn’t needed to. He’d watched the news coverage, seen the photographs, read the stories. The VSP hadn’t been first responders, but they’d been on campus within hours of the attack.

She’d seen things that would haunt any sane person. And now, thanks to this Reaper case, she’d seen even more.

The campus shooting had prompted her decision to come back here. Her need to keep anyone from getting too close, her lone-wolf lifestyle, her refusal to think about having kids someday, all related to the way she boxed up her emotions and hid them away. That she’d finally begun to let them out with the crying jag in his arms Saturday night hinted she might be ready to deal with them.